An Action Research Study On Applying Graded Reading To English Extracurricular Reading Teaching For Junior High School Students

Reading has been prioritized in English teaching in Chinese primary and middle schools.It is also the focus of teaching and research for experts,scholars,and front-line teachers.Through extensive reading,learners can improve their language proficiency and comprehension ability.Graded reading has been considered an effective way to achieve the goals above.However,in the field of junior English teaching,not many research attempts have been made to investigate the effect of graded reading.Meanwhile,few front-line teachers grade the reading materials to guide the students’ extracurricular reading activities and improve their English reading ability.This study attempts to improve junior high school students’ reading ability by applying graded reading to extracurricular reading teaching.The research questions are as follows:1.What are the effective ways for teachers to organize junior high school students’ extracurricular reading activities through graded reading?2.What is the effect of graded reading on students’ English ability?This study is an action research study.A total of 16 junior high school students participated in the study.The data are collected mainly through testing,interview,and teaching logs.STAR Assessments were used in pre-test and post-test.Based on the GE and Lexile values obtained from the pre-test,the author provided students with graded readers as reading materials and carried out graded reading training for five months.The results of this study show that when organizing students’ extra-curricular reading activities through graded reading,teachers can start from the following aspects:expanding vocabulary,selecting suitable graded reading materials,and using effective reading strategies.It is found that graded reading can not only facilitate students’ grammar learning and vocabulary expansion,but also strengthen their reading motivation,increase their language input,improve their comprehensive language competence,and inspire their interest in English learning.